I would like to ask for advice on buying a condensor mic. I am going to use it for recording of material(paper,wood,plastic,metal,tissue) low amplitude sounds on "studio" and for live performance.

I would like something that can easily record i.e. rubbing tissue with little noise, and directional enough to not capture the whole place where i am (specially to not get killed by feedback on loud live performance).

My budget is between 300 and 500 euros wich is more or less the same than dollars. I use to buy on www.musicstore.de or here in Barcelona at Alfasoni.com

i also had some good experiences with th 3030, thats a big-membrane(dont know the exact translation)and dont forget u have to buy a pre-amp w/ phantom-power also.usually the big-mebrane-mics are used for vocals, but as i said, we used it for recording everythingfrom cars on the street to room-percussions to drums, guitar amp, insects...they make cheap but very good mics.bye

Before you spend your hard earned, try and borrow as many mics as you can from friends & colleagues and try them all out. Make notes when recording to help you out at playback time.

Big name mics aren't necessarily the best depending on your project.

For example, I have a Sony stereo condenser mic which is really wide, and sounds lovely. However, I also have a no-name dynamic mic which cost me around 10 Euros which, to be perfectly honest, does a much better job than the Sony in some areas.

Yeah, I used the 4040 and I would say it is the best mic for that price you can get!

If you want to, I can send you a little recording sample, made in my living room - acoustic guitar played by my brother. Even with a behringer-mixer it sounds good and I know it from a professional studio where it makes a good figure together with the TLA Channel one, only the directly comparation with the Neumann U87 is a matter - of course the U87 sounds from outer space :wink: But if you think about that the U87 costs 8TIMES MORE!!!!! the sound of the 4040 is more than worth the money (it´s always the same problem: when you work onetime with an upperclass mic or what else you know why the famous recordings sound soooooooo fucking excellent). And one tip at last:

You can try to combine your recordings made with the 4040with the Antares-MicrophonModeller Plugin,in this case I made some really nice soundquality FX, but this depends on your recordings, I think with voices and Basses you can get nice happenings